The Assault on Tony's
Page 18
I have come to know Rudd, Carey, Fenton, Langston, Miles, Osmond, Jill, the busboy, and even the dead bartender very well. I’ll spare the reader my abundant commentary on them and John’s work in general. He does appear in the novel in a fragmented sense. He is the liberal part of Carey, the moralistic persuasion in Rudd, and he possessed the same profound addiction as Langston.
John was in Los Angeles during the riots in 1992 and relatively sober at that time. His wife happened to be in Cleveland on family business, and we were all worried about John living that frightening truth on the other side of the country. Of course, in John’s mind he was living a part of history. The experience stayed with him. Riots loom in the background of Better (a yet unpublished novel by John) and have an integral part in Assault. I spoke to him during those tumultuous days back in 1992. He had bought a gun-the gun-a Smith & Wesson. He took out a lot of cash. Everyone should have to experience curfew at some point in life. Don’t worry honey, I’m fine. Really I am, there’s no trouble here in Venice Beach. I love you too.
John has left behind so much. He was a truly tragic character of our time. It’s amazing how much I’ve learned from him. It sometimes makes me believe he isn’t really dead at all, but with me here, sitting at his computer, helping me. I still use many of the programs that were originally installed by John. When I sign in to the word processing program I am reminded of this as “John O’Brien, me” blips on the screen.
John is gone now. The wound he left grows imperceptibly less painful with time. I live in apprehension of my thirty-fourth birthday, the day that I reach the age my big brother couldn’t make it to. It is the day I will outgrow him, the day he will eternally become my little brother. Every piece of life I experience from that day on will be jaded in my own mind, characterized as one John never allowed himself. Such is the sentence passed upon those left behind by a suicide victim.
I’ll see you, John O’Brien, me, when I sign in tomorrow. I hope I’ve made you proud and done what you would have wanted me to do.
Love, Erin